Karnataka Elections: Difficult Road for BJP
Vasanth N K
THE assembly elections in Karnataka are due this May. The schedule for elections is about to be announced and informally it is known that the elections will be held in the second week of May. Election process would be set in motion in March and the model code of conduct would set in by April beginning. Karnataka assembly election has attracted national attention, this being the only state in southern India ruled by the BJP. Karnataka has shown two long term political trends for the last four decades – it has never elected the same party consecutively in assembly elections. It has never given majority to the same party in consecutive assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
Obviously both these trends go against BJP retaining the state in the 2023 elections. Another fact often overlooked is that the BJP has never got the majority of seats in Karnataka assembly. Even in the last (2018) elections, it won 104 seats well below the 113 seats required for a clear majority. Congress won 80 and JD(S) 37 seats. However, Congress got more (38.14 per cent) votes than BJP (36.35 per cent), while the JD(S) got 18.3 per cent. It has always formed governments with ‘Operation Kamala’. In fact ‘Operation Kamala’ which is now the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) of BJP wherever whenever it loses, was first experimented and perfected in Karnataka. Now, this operation is augmented with other operations such as witch-hunting of opposition leaders by central agencies.
One striking feature of the Karnataka election scene today is that no government in the state so far has suffered such a massive anti-incumbency. Perhaps only the Gundu Rao led Congress-I government of the 1980-83 period comes close. BJP government was installed in 2019, after toppling the Congress-JD(S) coalition rule that lasted for 14 months. BJP rule of over three and half years has become notorious for various failures – rampant corruption; widespread hate campaign; communal violence and lawlessness; instead of ‘double engine advantage’ the inability to defend linguistic, cultural identity, autonomy and legitimate interests of the state; shutting down or weakening of existing welfare schemes; vigorous pursuit of anti-farmer, anti-worker and anti-people policies; mis-governance; several scandals involving BJP legislators, ministers and party leaders; and suppression of dissent and democratic struggles.
“40% COMMISSION SARKAR”
“40% Commission Sarkar” is the name earned by the BJP government in this period. Corruption in recruitments, contracts, favours to corporates etc have peaked in this period. Rampant corruption is symbolised by two well publicised statements. The president of State Contractors Association, D Kempanna accused the BJP government of collecting 40 per cent commission in government contracts. He publicly stated in mid-2021 that the situation is unbearable for the contractors and this should be investigated. He also wrote a letter to the prime minister demanding an investigation. He repeated his statement in mid-2022 and also wrote again to the PM. Mohandas Pai, ex-CFO of Infosys and currently of Manipal Group, an ardent corporate supporter of the BJP, publicly called this government as known for ‘the most corrupt, ineffective and bad governance’ Karnataka ever had. Series of corruption cases earned the BJP Government the label of ‘40% Commission Sarkar’.
PSI (Police Sub Inspector) Scam is the most well known corruption case. This pertains to the Karnataka Police recruitment cell conducting an examination last year for filling up 545 vacancies of sub-inspectors in the state police department. Senior police officer ADGP (recruitment) who was the mastermind of the scam has been arrested. The scam involved insertion of correct answers in the OMR sheets of the candidates who paid bribes after shutting off CCTVs in the room. Total arrests so far in the scam has crossed 100 (police officers, candidates, intermediaries) and the highest known bribe paid is Rs 85 lakhs! Such a massive scam could not have happened without the political blessings or connivance. However no investigation has been done in this direction. Series of scams – Bitcoin scam, Covid emergency purchases scam, marks card scam, scam in education department exposed by the Registered Unaided Private Schools Managements’ Association (RUPSA), BDA scam and so on – have been unearthed. Not a week passes without a new scam.
Except in the case of PSI scam, no serious investigation of the scams has been taken up. Since the ‘40% Commission’ allegation made by the Contractors Association, two contractors – Santosh Patil (in April 2022) and T N Prasad (in December 2022) – have committed suicide not able to bear the debt burden, because of failure to get payments against contract works, because of the inability to pay hefty commission. While the former mentioned a minister, K S Eshwarappa, as the tormentor in the death note, circumstances in the latter also point to ‘40% Commission’ as the cause. While the police after ‘investigation’ gave a clean chit to the minister in the former case, it claimed that the suicide ‘has nothing to do with contract payment’ in the latter’s case even before making the ‘investigation’. Instead of investigating the ‘40% charge’ , the Contractors Association president and his four associates have been arrested on a defamation complaint filed by an MLA. The brazenness with which rampant corruption is being defended – with statements like ‘Congress also was corrupt and looted for 70 years, we got chance only now!’, ‘You cannot accuse without any proof’ and hoisting false cases on complainants – by the BJP party and the government leaders is also unprecedented in Karnataka.
“THIS ELECTION WILL BE – SAVARKAR VS TIPPU”
Widespread religious hate campaign, communal violence and lawlessness has been another hallmark of this BJP government. In this period, with the connivance of the administration and other State institutions, religious hate campaign and communal violence has spread to other parts of the state. Earlier forms/methods of inflicting religious hate campaign and violent often murderous attacks, lynching on minorities in the name of love jihad, anti-cow slaughter vigilantism, beef ban, fight against terrorism, foreign conspiracies etc continue unabated. Tippu Sultan continues to be the target of hate campaign. A new play “Tippu’s Real Dreams” (mocking Girish Karnad’s celebrated play “Tippu’s Dreams”) denigrating Tippu with usual hate-filled falsehoods has been prepared by Rangayana (famed state repertoire set up by B V Karanath, now totally taken over by Sanghi elements). Booking and repeat shows of the play are being propagated with full State support almost as part of an election campaign. It is planned to be staged in every constituency. ‘Tippu Express’ running between Bangalore-Mysore has been renamed ‘Wodeyar Express’. A bus stand with a dome like structure that was built with a BJP MLA’s funds was demolished at the insistence of a BJP MP. More symbols of syncretic secular culture/traditions like ‘Salaam Aarathi’ etc are being forcibly discontinued using administrative power. Communalisation of education is going on vigorously with measures such as communalising text books, introducing Gita and having discussions on moral education curriculum with Hindu mutts, denying eggs in midday meals etc. Secular and genuine cultural personalities are forced out and Sanghi personalities of dubious record are filled in State supported autonomous cultural institutions such as Kannada Sahitya Parishat, Sahitya Academy, Nataka Academy etc.
A new controversy is being spun that one of the mosques in Srirangapatnam was built after demolishing a Hanuman temple. Seeds of many such controversies are being sown in Kalburgi, Belagaum, Ballari, Koppal etc. A new campaign that Anjanadri (near Gangavathi, Koppal district) is the birth place of Hanuman and annual ‘Hanumamala Yatra’ similar to Shabarimalai Ayyappa Yatra is used to mobilise downtrodden youth and make them followers or cadres of Bajrang Dal. New forms of hate campaign and exclusion have been invented. One such form that is widely spread is ‘banning’ (by persuasion or force – by Sanghi or administration elements) Muslim traders from putting up shop/stalls in temple fairs. This kind of religious polarisation continues to be the main strategy of the BJP for diverting the attention away from its mal-administration and gross failures, as well as for vote gathering in elections. This was explicitly stated by the Karnataka BJP president. He said at his party cadre workshop that bad roads, flooding, bad governance should not be allowed to be made the election issue; but love jihad, defence of Hindu community should be made the issue. He also said in a public statement that this election will be of “Savarkar vs Tippu”
FAILURES OF ‘DOUBLE ENGINE’
One of the reasons of increase in support for the BJP in 2018 was its ‘double engine’ campaign. A section of people felt that the tradition of voting differently in the assembly and Lok Sabha elections put the state in a disadvantage. However people feel the ‘double engine’ model has failed in practice. Not only has it failed, people are realising that rather this model has made the state defenceless against the attacks on its linguistic, cultural identities, autonomy and legitimate interests of the state. The state is defenceless because when the same party is ruling both the state and the centre, the state leaders cannot voice state’s grievances as they are bound to obey the ‘high command’ which is notorious for its centralisation and authoritarian rule. The symbols of state’s enterprise, heritage and pride like (well run) State Bank of Mysore, Vijaya Bank, Corporation Bank, Syndicate Bank were merged with other (sometimes smaller loss making) banks and lost their identity.
Students of the state are losing their share of seats in the higher education institutions in the state due to centralisation of entrance examinations like NEET etc. Also while Hindi is allowed in these entrance exams, Kannada is not, putting the students from the state at a disadvantage. More and more employment opportunities (like in banks, railways etc.) are based on centralised tests, where similarly Hindi speaking people are at an advantage and people of the state at a disadvantage. BJP’s policy of imposing Hindi at all levels of education, administration is robbing Kannada of its opportunities. People feel that ‘double engine’ has also failed in addressing legitimate interests of the state in many inter-river water, border and other disputes, given the political ‘weight’ and BJP’s future plan/prospects in other states and Karnataka is taken for granted. In getting its legitimate share of GST, as well as central allocation of resources also, Karnataka is again ignored for similar reasons.
BJP MAY LOSE THE ELECTIONS
More details of other failures of the BJP government will be covered in the next report in this series of reports on karnataka election scene. Various actors in the election arena, their strengths/weaknesses, their campaign strategies and prospects, open/secret alliances, people’s political mood – will also be covered in subsequent reports till the election.
However one thing is very clear. With its monumental failures in the last three and half years, BJP has lost many sections of its (core as well as non-core) supporters. People are fed up with its misrule and are waiting to vote it out. This is the sense one gets from ground reports. BJP will lose the elections unless it comes up with some novel dramatic tactics. It is reported in a section of the press that all the four surveys – one each by the BJP and Congress, State Intelligence and one commissioned by media agency – conducted recently conclude that BJP will lose Karnataka assembly elections.
That will shut the door to South for the BJP.
